Dragging calves

I made this for Col. Glenn Moore several years ago when he made Lt. Col. It arrived back home after a tour in Iraq. I'm just glad both him and the knife made it back. Col. Moore has sacrificed a lot so we can sit in our heated houses and blog any thing we want.

While we are showing old stuff, this is a bit I made for Kyle 4 or 5 years ago. I can't believe it has lasted.

Joe was about to get mauled in this pic.

I had to throw down the camera and save him.

I think they are both sick of my camera.

Not much room in these old pens.

 We pulled some big calves tuesday, and had 2 that were too small to get on the truck. we went ahead and worked them before we sent them out with their mamas.

finished 1 piece bit

I finished the 1 piece bit yesterday.

I learned a lot on this one, and glad I built it. It gives me a lot of ideas for using larger diameter steel and will probably build one out of damascus in the near future.
 Starting out simple saves a lot of time in the long run, I now know some things not to do, and some things I should have done. When I need to do a fancy one, I've got a little less chance of adding to my scrap pile.

1 piece bit

I have been wanting to try one of these for quite a while. It hasn't taken me as long as I thought it would. This is my first one piece bit, I know no one that has made one, but have a neighbor thats father made one when he was a kid, and he says I'm going about it like he did.

The start. I bent the low port mouth piece into a 2ft. long 1/2in. rod. Then split the bar down the middle until it will make a 5 1/4 in. wide mouth piece.

I then split the 4 ends to make my rings, and hammered them to a 90 degree angle. The hardest part of this is keeping things anywhere close to square. there is lots of things pointed in lots of different directions, and they are all hot.

Hammering the rings in. I wished I could have gotten some hot and hammering photos, but I only have 2 hands.
I like this old time looking stuff, and spend a lot of time looking for it on the rare times I venture away from the ranch. Building one of these makes me appreciate what the old timers went through before "lectricty".

Hogs

A good morning running the hog traps. I had 7 this morning, and got 2 outside this trap.
These destructive beasts have become increasingly harder to trap. They have gotten a lot smarter, probably due to hunters keeping the big ones to sell, and turning the little ones out. Those little ones will never trap again. I hunt hogs 7 days a week, 365 days a year and can't tell I have made any difference at all. There is no telling how much money they cost me every year in lost pasture and torn up equipment.

A bit I made back in May. 1018/nickel damascus shanks and a low port mouthpiece. This was supposed to be a set of spurs, but the billet ended up too short, and I had to find something else to build out of it. I heat colored it just to see how it would look, and kind of liked it.